Friday, August 01, 2008

Sharp Inertial Shock Not Just For Astronauts

Can’t find the reference to “sharp inertial shock” – must have been a documentary I saw.

Apparently on one of the NASA Space Missions one of the astronauts phoned home and asked for some help with a piece of equipment. The technician at hand apparently either had a camera or some PHBs on/around him so he replied:

“Apply a sharp inertial shock.”

to which the reply was:

“Say again Houston?”

and the follow-up response:

“Uh, hit it.”

I love the phrase and probably overuse it.

Which is why I immediately thought of it when I saw this article:

Knock-based commands for your Linux laptop

Brilliant! I have a friend who can get over-excited when the computer doesn’t do what he expects it to do. Something like this could prove quite amusing if caught on camera. I can think of some nice practical jokes if something like this was available under Windows.

Does make you wonder what future interfaces are going to be built. We’ve got gestures with mouse/stylus/finger flicks, shaking/tilting for mobile devices with accelerometers and now knocking for laptops with accelerometers. Argh, got “shake your booty” running around inside my brain. I’ll stop now…

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